Malloy's 'Brutal Week'

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy wipes away a tear Monday as he recalled telling the families that their children had been killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Associated Press

By

Ted Mann

Updated Dec. 19, 2012 2:43 p.m. ET

A gun rampage that left 27 people dead, including 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school, has plunged this state's first-term governor, Dannel Malloy, into an unfamiliar position: consoler of the grieving.

Through a career in public office spanning 20 years, Mr. Malloy's stock in trade has been a hard-charging, managerial manner, allies and observers say. His hard edges have sometimes seemed to outweigh his efforts to empathize with other officials and the public. And while his struggles to overcome dyslexia and other learning disabilities have made him an effective debater, he sometimes speaks haltingly in dealing with the press, searching for the proper words.

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But in the aftermath of Friday's massacre in Newtown, the Democratic governor has been forced to lead the public in its rituals of mourning. In his most decisive, and painful, moment at a volunteer firehouse, he even took it upon himself to inform some that their children were dead.

In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Malloy dismissed the notion that he is too cool to lead during a tragedy.

"I think there is a sense, fed by the media, that I am this unfeeling automaton that just comes to work every day and goes to work without feeling," the 57-year-old governor said. "I reflect on what I do before, during and after I do it."

It is a task for which there is no script, the governor said, after attending his third funeral. "It's been a brutal week," he said, exhaustion in his voice. "You'd be hard-pressed to have a worse day than we did last Friday."

He added: "I haven't thought about much else but the firehouse."

Many political observers in Connecticut wouldn't have picked Mr. Malloy as the most likely candidate to lead an exercise in communal empathy.

"There is a distance between himself and the electorate, and there always has been," said Gary Rose, a political-science professor at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield.

Still, Mr. Malloy, the former Stamford mayor, has displayed rare flashes of vulnerability in the days since the shooting, most notably on Monday, when he choked up and wiped away tears at a capitol news conference, after a reporter asked him to describe the experience of informing many of the parents and family of Sandy Hook victims that their loved ones had died.

"I'm giving him pretty high marks," Mr. Rose said. "Here he is now in a new role which has nothing to do with policy and is all about healing. I think he has crossed over and has made some gains in that area. He's done more than I thought he could do."

It was during the governor's rush from the state capitol to the Sandy Hook firehouse, which served as a de facto shelter and receiving station for children and their parents, that Mr. Malloy learned the gravity of the crime that had unfolded Friday morning, said Roy Occhiogrosso, his senior adviser.

The scene inside the firehouse was tense and complicated, according to Mr. Occhiogrosso, police officials and state Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, a Republican whose district includes Newtown.

Some parents had collected their children and returned home. Others were gathered in an adjoining room of the building, waiting for news about their loved ones. They had been told the numbers of the dead but hadn't been told definitively that their relatives were gone.

Officials considered reserving space in the senior center nearby, in which to individually break the news to different sets of parents, Mr. McKinney said. But that move could have caused even more agitation and confusion, he said.

Mr. Malloy consulted with Col. Daniel Stebbins, the deputy commissioner of the state police and the highest-ranking officer on the scene, in the parking lot beside the firehouse. It was about 3 p.m.

At that point, Mr. Malloy said, he decided that he wouldn't wait for police to formally identify the dead even as their families waited, some disbelieving, in the firehouse.

The governor walked into the center of the room, and began speaking so softly, Mr. Occhiogrosso said, that one man called out to ask him to raise his voice.

"If you haven't been reunited with your loved one by now," Mr. Malloy said, "that is not going to happen."

The room exploded in wailing and tears, the officials said. Mr. McKinney, who had waited outside the door when Mr. Malloy went in to deliver the news, heard the cries from the hallway.

The task was immense, and deeply affecting, Mr. McKinney said, recalling a moment on Friday when he spotted Mr. Malloy sitting on a stool, alone, near the firehouse kitchen.

"He was sitting by himself and just, you know, staring," Mr. McKinney said. "I saw him in a way that obviously I've never seen him. Just as a guy with a really heavy heart."

In the wake of the shooting, official responsibilities haven't relented. On Tuesday, Mr. Malloy released a proclamation calling for a day of mourning in the state on Friday, one week after the attacks. In a letter to fellow governors, he asked them to join in a moment of silence at 9:30 a.m. Friday, commemorating the moment when the attacks began.

In the background, handled by aides and advisors, the obligations that existed before Sandy Hook bubbled along. The legislature will convene Wednesday to vote on a plan from Mr. Malloy's budget director to close a current-year deficit of more than $300 million.

The governor has opened the door to a broader debate on gun control, reminding reporters of his support for the federal assault weapon ban that expired in 2004 and expressing support for a ban on high-capacity ammunition clips. But he has largely focused on the work of tending to the grieving. That work, he suggested, is a coping method of its own.

"I have in some sense the advantage of having to worry about everybody else, and that's a way of filling up my time," he said. "There are moments I appreciate that."

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